Managing Boundaries

Transcript from video

It’s not that everybody’s manipulative. Sometimes people do just want to negotiate. They want to see you can come to some kind of mutual agreement. They might want a reasonable discussion. They might think that your boundary is unfair. Now, whether it is or not, they might just want to put their case across, in which case it doesn’t maybe do any harm to listen.

But when we’re just having normal kind of everyday conversations with a manipulative, narcissistic person, it is completely different. They are entitled to whatever it is they decide they’re entitled to. They lack empathy and they can be very, very manipulative at getting you to comply.

If they can’t do it with sweet talk and chocolates and flowers, then they will resort to underhand tactics.

Sometimes we don’t know what they are until they’re crossed, but once we get a sense of what our boundaries are, yes, we can be flexible in different situations and in different relationships. I suppose the way I would illustrate that is if you think of your home, if you were to leave the windows and the doors open all of the time, what you might find is people would take advantage.

You might come home from work and find your house empty, or you come in and you find other people watching your television and eating your chocolate biscuits. People are just going to take advantage. But if you were to close the doors, lock the windows and lock the doors all the time, no one’s ever going to get in. But then no one’s ever going to get out either, not even you. You’re going to be trapped in there. So you think of your boundaries, like your house, your windows, your doors. It’s up to you when you open them, it’s up to you when you close them. It’s up to you whether or not you answer the door.

Even if you do answer the door, it is your choice. It is your decision whether or not to invite them in. You can keep them at the door and talk to them, it is entirely up to you. Your boundaries are pretty much the same. There are some people you are going to invite into your home. There are some people you’re just going to keep at the door.

You might do a favour for someone, but you might not do that same favour for someone else. Manipulative, narcissistic people will try to hold you to account and say that you’re inconsistent and you can’t be relied upon. It’s unfair that you would say yes here and you wouldn’t say yes there.

It’s the same kind of thing. It is entirely up to you. So when you get a sense of what your boundaries are and why they might be important, understanding them is one thing, and communicating is one thing as well. But it’s how do you reinforce them?

I think if you’re going to set down a consequence for someone crossing your boundary, if you don’t follow that through, you’ve just shown them that you didn’t mean it. You’ve just shown them what they can get away with.

So if you’re going to set consequences, and it really depends on the situation, if those For example, if you say, “That’s it, we’re done. I’ll never speak to you again.” But then afterwards, you’re just angry for a while and then you start to come around, they have learned that you weren’t serious and what you’ll find is they’re going to continue.

If you are going to set boundaries, for instance, “If you keep doing that this conversation is over.” then you have to follow that through regardless of whether they like it or not, I often say they act like they’re shocked they’re being treated very badly. It’s not like they weren’t warned, not like they didn’t know.

But another way to handle your boundaries is if you say you don’t like being treated in a certain way and they feign confusion. The more you try to explain why you don’t like being treated like crap, the more energy you’re burning and the more they’re finding little ways to undermine you, try to convince you that’s not being treated like crap, that’s actually normal, you’re just overreacting.

So I often think, why not just give them their own work to do rather than you explain why you don’t like being treated like crap. You ask them to explain why they think it is okay to treat you like that. You don’t have to explain why your ‘no’ is important. Ask them to explain why they think your ‘no’ isn’t.